Phi Brain

[The Big Guy]

1:

This is basically Yu Gi Oh and Professor Layton all wrapped into one, with weird hair, over dramatized puzzle solving, and hints of future tournaments. Now we only need a top hat and an English gentleman, and this would be my ideal series. The only complaint I have thus far are the weird character designs, but it was a nice setup episode and I'm looking forward to more.

[AC]

1:

Aww man, I'm hating this show already on so many levels. It's Yu Gi Oh with a hint of Air Gear, a slap of SKET Dance and a pinch of everything shounen. I can see the character archetypes already: the protagonist's the cool-obsessed and angtsy dude, his sidekick is the tomboyish flower pot, and everyone else who will be introduced in the show would likely belong to some kind of archetype.

What I find incredibly ironic is, for a show that's supposed to be ingenious, clever or at least bright because of the puzzle theme, it's awfully stupid. Every puzzle that Kaito come across gets solved without any logical explanation; he knows how to solve them, and we don't (or maybe we're NOT SUPPOSED to) know how he does it. We just take it as it is, which in turns makes me feel dumb about myself.

Oh, and did anyone notice that Minotaur's voice is the same as club president Jikugawa? Did I need to make an educated guess to arrive to that discovery? No. For shooting itself on the foot right from episode one, I've gotta hand it to this show.

[Fumoffu!!]

1:

This looks like a quality show.

Okay, seriously speaking, it's fairly entertaining, the puzzles he solves are just meant to impress us, though I feel there may be some minor opportunity for us to try the puzzles in later episodes. The characters designs aren't much to my liking, and as AC said, there are archetypes galore. I'll watch this, but I don't expect great things of it.

[leokiko.]

2:

Could it get more cliched this THIS? We see the obvious outcome, Kaito solve the awesome puzzle at the start with his awesome ''artefact''(yes, yu-gi-oh vibes everywhere) and then there is this organization and the Divine Puzzle and bla-bla-bla. Oh, just remembered, there is this character that randomly appeared screaming BAKA-A KAB KABA BAKA(the rival role, it had to have one), which, by the way, was really funny, but at the same, retarded. The same with his character, freaking annoying red-haired dude that only thinks about money. But the last puzzle, in my point of view, was very good, because this time, we could solve it too, not just Kaito. It was an easy puzzle, really, but I enjoyed it. You know what? This is entertaining enough, I will keep watchng,  but there is still a chance that I will drop it if it falls short with lame puzzles later on.

Also, who can't guess that POG's leader is Kaitos childhood friend? It's soooo obvious.

[AC]

2:

You know what, forget it. If this show insists on being one featuring the most impossible of puzzles being solved with the stupidest of solutions, so be it. If there's anything more vexing that watching a shounen show full of cliches and immature "cool"-obsessed characters, it's watching one that's also pretentious.

Screw the 3-episode test; I'm making a new one called the 2-episode test.

DROPPED.

[Fumoffu!!]

3:

They're a bunch of annoying pricks. I don't think I've hated as much of a cast as now. I'm so tempted to drop this, if it doesn't show any improvement by next episode I will. Shouldn't have picked it up in the first place...

[Fumoffu!!]

4:

You'll never guess what... I solved the puzzle before they did. I was surprised by this, but I really did it. There was the bit when he rearranged the paintings that the audience couldn't work out because they just left it for Kaito to solve without showing much sign of solving, so I didn't beat him on that, but I got that the beginning of the names for each column was the same slightly before him, and I then subsequently finished the puzzle (i.e. recognized them as roman numerals and worked out the code) before him.

That aside, it's a shame I couldn't solve the entire puzzle, because it is quite satisfactory when you beat them too it, and I do want to work out the puzzles for myself. They also introduced a total trap, which is just weird. The characters weren't as annoying as previously, but I still hate most of their guts. It was a good enough episode to stop me dropping it, but I'm not going to go through 25 episodes of this unless it improves more.

[Fumoffu!!]

5:

I lol at the massive drop in animation quality.

[Fumoffu!!]

8:

Well, these episodes have been better than the first few, but they aren't that great. I think the main improvement is that they've stopped trying to make Kaito look really cool, it was just retarded. One thing that I do think is quite good in this is the music, the BGM in this episode was a good example of some of the better quality music.

[Fumoffu!!]

10:

Well, it's better than C³ at the very least, and there was a puzzle you could solve this time, and I thought it was alright, though I did have to completely ignore how cringy it was.

[Fumoffu!!]

15:

Well, Seeing as I'm the lone watcher of this, I'll give a run down of the series these 5 past episodes.

They've been getting gradually better, unfortunately half the puzzles are still unavailable for us to solve, and the characters are still pretty weak, however they have grown on me somewhat, Kaito is nothing like he was in the first episode, which is a marked improvement. If I were to rate it right now, I'd say I'd give it a 4 or 5. The background music is very good, not so much the animation, but it remains a perfectly tolerable show, where the focus has gone off solving puzzles (though of course a puzzle is solved every episode) onto the relationship between Rook and Kaito, and the attempt by the POG to isolate Kaito from his friends.

[Gessen]

Is Phi Brain up for 24-26 EPs? I think I left off at episode 8 or so and need to catch up. It's good to hear it's gets better.

[Fumoffu!!]

Is Phi Brain up for 24-26 EPs? I think I left off at episode 8 or so and need to catch up. It's good to hear it's gets better.

Around that amount of episodes. I will give you a warning that you might dislike these episodes as much as before, it's just the series is growing on me I think. It could be getting better though.

[Gessen]

Awesome, thanks. I'm fairly easy to please. I enjoyed the first half of the series. I'm a fan of chicks with wrestling moves haha. The protagonist is alright, I guess I was just bothered by the series indecisiveness...maybe? They couldn't seem to focus on either the puzzles or plot. It'd be cool to pull of both well, but it seemed like they were just pointing out that he is smart and his power is cool, while not really developing the plot for awhile, nor were they focusing on complex/cool puzzles. So that was a bit irritating. But I would probably still enjoy it regardless. It's something a little different from what we usually get.

[leokiko.]

A second season has been announced, it will air on April 8th.